This houseplant is called purple passion, and it is one of my favorite flowers. When I was little, there always was one of these growing in our kitchen, but I never saw it bloom. I always assumed that this is not a flowering plant, but the green leaves with tiny purple hairs were beautiful enough for me to fall in love with it. Recently, I saw an overgrowing purple passion in a tiniest possible plastic pot at a garden nursery, and I just could not walk past it.
I replanted it into a larger clay pot, and placed it where it belongs, in a kitchen. After a while, I noticed small yellow flowers spur up. I was so shocked and happy! At first I wanted to pat myself on the back for being such a good gardener, but then I found out what happened.
Turns out, the flower of purple passion is not really a looker, and it has a strong, but not very pleasant smell. Even if you could get past the fact that the flowers are small and hardly noticeable, turns out that they drain too much energy from the plant. As the result, the leaves of purple passion start to look worse; they even lose a little bit of purple color. Why then I never saw it bloom before? Throughout my childhood, my mom kept plucking these flowers in order to keep the leaves and plant looking great without me ever noticing. This is how I found out that my mom is garden-ninja! 🙂
